Hospitals and health systems have started to move past AI pilot programs to quantify real financial returns.
While pace and scale of the impact can vary by organization, many financial leaders are taking the measured approach, putting emphasis on use cases in clinical documentation and diagnostics prior to further scaling. Others have pinpointed double-digit gains in patient-facing time, clinical efficiency and revenue capture, highlighting that AI’s margin impact has become a reality.
Becker’s connected with CFOs and finance leaders to break down if AI is actually moving the margin needle or is still generating pilot programs and promises.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: Is AI actually moving your margin needle, or are you still seeing mostly pilot programs and promises?
Doug Arvin. Vice President of Finance and Finance Leader, Essentia Health West (Duluth, Minn.): We’re more at the beginning than the end, but I think we’re seeing the impact of it. I see it every day in the work particularly around the finance and administrative areas, along with practitioner efficiencies in creating value and better decision making. I think we’ve got much more to accomplish and to learn about the overall capabilities. If I were looking at the iceberg, I would say we’re closer to the tip than the base at this point. We’re continuing to work on that as most health systems are and look forward to those innovations in the future.
Eric Price. CFO, Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital (Manistique, Mich.): Currently, for Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital, most of our early AI investment has been in clinical areas such as advanced diagnostic equipment in radiology, ambient listening and chart notes in some clinical settings, and some very early implementation of data analysis using AI technology. The areas which we have invested in are showing some improvements to our margins through efficiency gains and reduction in administrative burden; however, at this time we are taking a conservative approach in widespread adoption of AI until the technology becomes more vetted within the industry. We are watching this area closely and with great interest.
Jim Heilsberg. CFO, Quincy Hospital and Large Construction Project Manager, TriState Health (Clarkston, Wash.): AI continues to be a relevant component of improvement opportunity for all areas of healthcare. The ability of AI to move the margin needle further will depend on facilities’ ability to prioritize investment for AI over other system investment hungry initiatives.
Mike Lewis. CFO, Onvida Medical Group (Yuma, Ariz.): At the onset of looking at AI systems and implementation, we were very prescriptive of making sure that we had quantifiable outcomes with the data, specifically from a financial standpoint, so that we could see what that investment meant and what it was yielding throughout the implementation, post go live and then in the full implementation phase, to see what that meant for margin improvement for our organization. We’ve seen fantastic results so far.
Going across the spectrum or continuum, we’ve seen a 14% increase in patient-facing time. I’ve been in healthcare for a little over two decades. When I started, this was really at the rise of EMRs and EHRs, and as we went that way, many physicians talked about how they wanted to go back to superbuilds because they just spent time entering into the computer. They weren’t looking at the patient, so that 14% increase in patient-facing time, although it’s not necessarily quantifiable, it’s very meaningful to the physician, which helps with physician burnout and physician retention. We have an 86% utilization of the platform that we utilize and 27% decrease in pajama time, which is defined as outside the clinician’s working hours.
I had an ENT that told me he had to get a new hobby because he used to go home, have dinner with his wife, spend the evening for several hours entering documentation into the system. Now when he leaves the clinic, he’s done. So that 27% decrease in pajama time is meaningful. [We have] 35% average documentation time savings.
Those are some of the softer measures that we’ve looked at, at least from a financial standpoint. We’ve seen about a $24,000 improvement in our revenue yield by this, largely by throughput. By making it more efficient for the clinicians, they’ve on average been able to see one additional patient per day.
We’ve also seen an increase in our revenue capture and a decrease in our charge lag. This is very exciting for me because it’s helping the clinician, it’s making their life easier, it’s helping the patient, and from a financial standpoint or organizational standpoint, we’re seeing a real quantifiable financial return for Onvida.
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